Less Than Zero Tolerance

One night in late December, Amelia came to my room because she couldn’t sleep.  She usually watched movies to fall asleep on an iPad which she used as a security blanket, but it had a dead battery, and the charging cable was not long enough to reach my bed from the closest outlet.  I took her back in with Rita and plugged the iPad in.  She asked me to stay and hold her as Rita was sleeping.  Amanda was asleep in her bed in the room.  I climbed into the far side of the bed (against a wall) with Amelia.  She eventually fell asleep.  As I was climbing out of bed, I noticed Rita’s cell phone wasn’t locked, and there was a text message alert.  Rita had been guarding her phone obsessively; in hindsight, I was so dumb not to see what was going on–so I decided to see who was texting her.  It was her “friend” Mike.  The message and previous ones suggested they were far more than friends at the time.  I jostled Rita to wake her to talk.  I wasn’t angry at the time because I didn’t know her relationship with Mike had been going on long before she filed for divorce.  I had been testing the dating waters, so I figured she was too.  I wanted to talk to her to see if Mike was the real reason she pushed so hard to move to Michigan.

Jostling Rita didn’t wake her.  I then lightly slapped her hip.  She still didn’t wake up.  I then slapped her hip a bit harder, but certainly not hard enough to leave a mark or wake the kids sleeping in the room, and she woke up.  We went into my bedroom and argued/talked into the night for many hours.  Things ended peacefully, and she told me that even though she liked Mike a lot, he wasn’t the reason she had grown so adamant about moving to Michigan.  Clearly, this was a lie in hindsight.

This incident apparently played a large role in Rita getting a protective order, as apparently, this smack on the hip got distorted into me slapping her.  Of course, when a person tells the court someone slapped them, it is assumed that means someone slapped them in the face.  The judge apparently never actually questioned Rita about where and how hard I “slapped” her.  I have never slapped anyone in the face, and I certainly didn’t smack Rita on the hip to hurt her.  It’s also physically impossible to smack someone very hard when you’re standing above, and they are lying in a bed with their hip at waist height.  Plus, it was December, and I’m sure Rita had pajamas on and a blanket covering her.  Amanda and Amelia were within feet of us and slept through the entire event.  I’m sure it left no mark or bruise, and Rita never provided any evidence that it did.